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Polyglot Bible: Numbers: Numbers 19

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This is a parallel presentation of Numbers 19 from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in four ancient textual traditions: the Hebrew Masoretic Text (with Strong's concordance numbers), the Greek Septuagint, the Hebrew Tanakh, and the Latin Vulgate. The chapter sets out the ritual of the red heifer (parah adumah), one of the Torah's most enigmatic statutes: an unblemished red cow is slaughtered outside the Israelite camp, burned with cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet thread, and its ashes mixed with water to create a purification solution. This "water of separation" is then used to cleanse anyone who has become ritually impure through contact with a human corpse, with sprinkling performed on the third and seventh days of impurity. The passage's most distinctive and paradoxical feature is that the ritual simultaneously purifies the unclean person while rendering impure everyone who participates in preparing the purification water — the priest, the one who burns the heifer, and the one who gathers the ashes all become unclean until evening. The text is primarily legal-liturgical in character, laying out precise procedural requirements with severe communal consequences (being "cut off from Israel") for failure to undergo purification. This multi-version format would be of interest to biblical scholars, textual critics, or those studying the history of scriptural transmission across Jewish and Christian traditions.

Polyglot Bible: Numbers: Numbers 19

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